A Declining Religious Test For Office

When a politician publicly avers that he “is still a believer in” something, it is a marker of a religious man appealing to religious prejudices.

So Graham Richardson’s climate confirmation is disturbing. First, for its quasi-religiosity. Second, for its mischaracterisation of science. And third, for its outright, well, misrepresentation that Mr Richardson has ever held any belief passionately.

I am still a believer in climate change. The science is robust and irrefutable. In 1989 I took a submission to take action to the Hawke cabinet. I was rolled in the debate but I demonstrated a belief I have held passionately for more than two decades.

When someone says they believe ‘in’ something, it is a statement of faith. For something of scientific or pragmatic importance, practical people ‘believe that” a state of affairs holds. To believe ‘in’ something is to wear a badge, in this case of the new standard of moral goodness. Yes, it’s a single word quibble, but it is representative of the absurd faith-based superficialities that politicians and public figures now have to embrace.

Any candidate in the People’s Republics that constitute much of Australia’s inner cities will have been asked this sort of question. It is simply a faith-based qualification for office.

Of course, when it is climate change and not anthropogenic global warming that is the subject of belief, it is a pretty empty statement. But that is not what is meant. Climate change is a code for a suite of related but separate beliefs, all of which lack the certainty which has been claimed for them.

But let us pass to the one sentence destruction of scientific method. Science can be robust, but it can never be irrefutable. That is Richardson rhetoric operating to mischaracterise science as dogma; a dogma that happens to further the Left’s political interests. Set aside the question of whether the science he points to is robust at all.

And lastly, a 20-year committed belief from ‘whatever-it-takes’ man; the man who worked hand-in-glove with Eddie Obeid; the man who turned the NSW Right into what it is; the man who shaped the do-nothingness and value-nothingness of NSW Labor. To say it stretches credibility is to be generous.

Note too, that what counts is that he has “demonstrated’ his belief, not that he held it, acted on it or subjected it to review in changing circumstances.

Ignore the content of the article. The idea that there haven’t been enough voices promoting and supporting anthropogenic global warming theory, or enough money spent, is an absurd back-pedal. The point on avoiding argument, however, is just; proponents are avoiding confrontation with inconvenient facts.

If this is what the master-manipulator of Green emotions is reduced to, it augurs well for the re-emergence of truly robust, falsifiable science.